


Fellowship

by monimala



Category: Saving Hope, Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, Crossover, F/M, POV Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-28
Updated: 2012-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 01:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monimala/pseuds/monimala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after TVD 3.15, “All My Children,” and during the first few episodes of <i>Saving Hope</i>. He lived entire lifetimes while they slept.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fellowship

They never question his disappearances, why he vanishes for months at a time. He’s their elder, the dour and ever-so-serious Elijah, who likely goes off to a mountaintop to brood and count his sins. Rebekah is glad to see the back of him, as is Kol. Finn might truly miss him — were his sole concern not their dear, sainted mother — and Klaus pretends not to care at all. They don’t realize, so trapped are they in their petty little monstrosities, that he lived entire lifetimes while they slept.

Elijah was a painter, a poet and a carpenter. He’s been butcher, barber, apothecary and teacher. Years before the Salvatores returned to Mystic Falls, he studied human biology at university, hoping to gain insights into the fragile creatures his kind views as prey. He excelled at Harvard, honing his skill with bone and sinew, and how it all connects. He did a lengthy rotation in Mexico, sipping from the poor and helping them in turns. 

When he leaves for Canada, it is another such sabbatical: remembering for himself what it is to heal instead of kill. He dons the name and credentials of Dr. Joel Goran like a comfortable pair of surgical scrubs and steps into Hope Zion Hospital as though it’s exactly what it says on the tin: a place of hope, a place of God’s choosing.

Joel Goran is everything that Elijah Mikaelson is not: a giver of life, casually and confidently brilliant, free with his body and his charm. It’s freeing to _be_ him. To mainline coffees and swagger and mend what’s broken. But there is, as always, the thorn along with the rose. Darling Alex, so vibrant and smart…and so completely devastated. With every glance in her direction, Elijah and Joel go instantly to war inside his chest. The first week alone, he trips over his tongue, struggling to maintain the accent she would recognize from medical school…and from the bedroom whispers against her throat.

After Tatia, after Katherine, it was Alex Reid he opened himself to. Just a crack. Enough to let in the barest hint of light. A tall, powerful force of a woman, her resemblance to a Petrova doppelganger begins and ends with dark hair. She is, in all other ways, singular. Or at least she _was_.

Because her loss of Charlie...that is terribly familiar. The mulish set of her jaw, the determination to spit at Fate and soldier on, the private tears…these are all things he recognizes. Alex’s grief is so profound, her faith so unshakable, and both call to him with someone else’s voice. The echoes chase him through the hospital corridors; they follow him into the OR and to the on-call room where he first takes Maggie Lin to bed. But he can’t outrun them. Not really. Nor should he try.

This is not just a place of hope and a place of God’s choosing that he’s come to. 

It’s a place where Elena Gilbert’s indomitable spirit haunts his every step. 

 

\--end--

August 28, 2012


End file.
